How to Decorate the Backyard for Halloween for Cheap

Filling orange trash bags with leaves creates oversize pumpkins.

Decorating your yard for Halloween doesn't have to cost a lot of money. You can trick your yard out for trick-or-treat night and still have money left over for plenty of treats for the little ghouls and goblins. Avoid costly ready-made items and make use of items that you already have in your home. If do-it-yourself projects aren't your style, you can still find less-expensive options for decorating at your local farmer's market and dollar store.

Spiderwebs and Creepy Crawlies

Fold up a black trash bag and cut it as you would to make a paper snowflake to create a giant spider web to hang on your porch or in trees. Make a big spider by filling a black garbage bag with wadded newspaper or grass clippings; attach four pool noodles on each side to make its legs. Place under the tree with the trash-bag spider web. Use smaller grocery store plastic bags to make baby spiders. Just fill up the grocery bags with wadded paper as you did the large bags. Attach four straws to each side of the bag; spray paint the baby spider bodies black or purple. Let dry and hang the spider babies from the tree above the big spider.

Cardboard

Fashion a graveyard in your yard, using old, large pieces of cardboard as gravestones. Draw the shape of the tombstones onto the cardboard with a permanent marker; cut out the shapes and paint the tombstones. Don't forget to add silly or scary names and epitaphs. Glue a yard stake to the back of the tombstones and arrange them in your yard for your own cemetery. Surround your graves with small piles of topsoil. Buy a few plastic hands and place them in the soil so they are sticking out of it, as if they are attached to a body that is clawing to the surface. Perhaps even place a few black silk roses on the graves or perch a blackbird atop one.

Clothing

Dig out a pair of worn-out jeans and an old shirt; stuff them full of newspaper to fashion a body. Sit the "body" on a bench or porch step and prop a pumpkin on it to use as its head. For extra eeriness, fashion a few walking zombies in your yard using your old clothes; prop them up on a frame of chicken wire. To make a chicken wire frame, use the arms and legs of your clothing as a guide; bend the wire to fit the clothing, molding the legs so that one is slightly in front of the other, as if in mid-stride. Fill it out with newspaper just as you did your seated figure, and use a foam-craft pumpkin as a head.

Natural Materials

Go to the farmer's market or local pumpkin patch to find pumpkins, dried cornstalks, Indian corn and gourds. Tie the cornstalks to your lamppost or put one on either side of your doorway. Affix Indian corn to trees, and line your path or walkway with pumpkins and large gourds. Use ribbon to tie ribbon or string to gourds or mini pumpkins and hang them from a tree like ornaments.

About the Author

Jenna Fletcher has enjoyed writing and reading anything she can get her hands on for a very long time. While attending Muhlenberg College for her Bachelor of the Arts, she was selected to present several academic papers in national conferences. These days, Jenna writes mainly about home decor, lifestyles, crafts, food, and fitness on her blog, SensationallySeasonal.com.